Communicating with Data

Chapter 1. Communication

Trying to get anything done in an organization always requires more communication than you first expect. On any given day, you might be communicating with the following:

• The executive, to ask for funding to support a new project

• Your management, getting agreement to use their people’s time

• Your peers, to deal with new challenges that arise daily

• Your customers and clients, to deal with their latest requests

• Your suppliers, to ensure that your logistics chain is ready

• Your team, to change priorities as needed

If everyone else in your organization is communicating this much, that’s a lot of activity. Trying to make your points and questions heard—or even just reading, organizing, and responding to this onslaught—is a tough challenge for anyone. Any advantage you can gain will make you more effective at your job. This chapter shares the key aspects of communication by applying them to data visualization and shows you how understanding these basic principles can help you communicate more effectively.

You need to be heard, but you also need to ensure that what you say makes an impression. To help with that, this chapter also discusses the final, commonly overlooked part of the communication process: the receiver must retain the information you communicate in their memory.

The aim of this book isn’t to teach you something new about your area of expertise but rather to help you share your knowledge more effectively. One way to do that is to combine ...